David N.O Ansah Captures Gucci x Manju Collab of Jackie 1961 Bag

AOC is a little late to Gucci’s October 2020 Gucci x Manju Collab celebration of their Jackie 1961 bag. Fashion stylist Kusi Kubi told British Vogue’s Alice Cary: “The current youth in Ghana — a lot of the guys — already have bags like that.”

Gucci asked Kubi to team up with Richmond Orlando Mensah of Manju Journal, an outstanding, celebratory platform dedicated to elevating the work of African creatives, and Britain’s esteemed journalist and creative Charlene Prempeh’s agency A Vibe Called Tech. The initiative represents the brand’s first creative project with an African media platform, writes Manju on Twitter.

The campaign titled ‘We are all they’ tackles the topic of gender fluidity and its roots in Ghanaian culture. “The idea is based on the fact that pronouns in Ghanaian dialects are genderless,” Charlene Prempeh explains. “‘They’ is used to describe male or female rather than ‘he’ or ‘she,’ and Manju wanted to explore what a fluid approach based on Ghanaian visual culture would look like.”

This campaign challenges the assumption in Western culture that Black men are hyper-masculine and Black women are so overly-sexualised that they are masculine, too. The Gucci x Manju Collab challenges those stereotypes, offering insight into Ghana’s cultural language around gender that few outsiders understand.

Models in the campaign include Anastasia Cobbinah, Benjamin Mensah, Brigette Appiah, Dennis Quaye, Jangani Mumin and Seth Bedzo photographed by David N.O Ansah. Of course, Alessandro Michele’s vision also pervades the collab campaign — and a wonderful campaign it is.

Manju Journal’s Instagram is a marvel of creativity. Watch their Gucci campaign videos on this link.

Elsewhere in Accra

Related: I hesitate to share this early December AOC article on environmental justice in Ghana — using images from Accra, where this gorgeous and inspiring photo shoot took place. Black creatives become exhausted with attempts to dwell on the downtrodden vision of the African content, when they are working so hard to change it.

Reality is that this dangerous to human health, technological garbage heap is largely American garbage. We do not recycle or de-contaminate technological products before shipping them to third-world countries.

So take this glorious Gucci x Manju Collab with its bold-colorful, creative vision and contrast it with this non-fashion , predominantly American-made reality in the same city.

It says something about the souls of Americans and American businesses who don’t invest in cleaning up our own garbage — and especially dangerous tech garbage. I sound like I’m always weeping these days — and I did weep when posting this story. Our insufferable American, imperialist arrogance — unleashed exponentially again under Trump — cannot continue. ~ Anne